LDING OF IT

In a wilderness of wonders they are piling up the stores
Gathered by the hands of labor on a hundred happy shores;
In a palpitating plexus of white palaces they heap
The marvels of the earth and air--the treasures of the deep;
They have reached their restless fingers in the pockets of the past,
And robbed the sleeping miser of the wealth he had amassed--
To the festival of nations--to the tournament of toil,
They have garnered in the offerings of every sun and soil;
They have levied on the genius of the age, and it replies
Full handed, with the blessed light of heaven in its eyes;
In honor of old Spain they have taxed the brawn and brain
Of a planet, for the glory of that Master of the Main,
Whose fortitude is written on each flag that is unfurled
Above the great white city of the world.

THE MEETING OF THE NATIONS

They are climbing over mountains, they are sailing over seas,
From the artics, from the tropics, from the dim antipodes;
In the steamship, in the warship, under banners loved the best,
They are laughing up the waters from the east and from the west:
From the courts of Andalusia, from the castles of the Rhone,
To the meeting of the brotherhood of nations they are blown;
From the kraals beside the Congo, from the harems of the Nile,
They are thronging to the occident in never-ending file;
From the farthest crags of Asia, from the continents of snow,
The long-converging rivers of mankind begin to flow;
In the twilight of the century, its wars forever past,
The nations of the universe are clasping hands at last
By Columbia's inland waters, where in beauty lies impearled
The imperial white city of the workers of the world.

THE PASSING OF THE PAGEANT

When the roses of the summer burn to ashes in the sun,
When the feast of love is finished, and the heart is overrun;
When the hungry soul is sated and the tongue at last denies
Expression to the wonders that are wearing out the eyes,
Then the splendor it will wane like a dream that haunts the brain,
Or the swift dissolving beauty of the bow above the rain;
And the summer domes of pleasure that bubble up the sky
Will tumble into legends in the twinkling of an eye;
But the art of man endureth, and the heart of man will glow
With reanimated ardor as the ages come and go.
The pageants of the present are but pledges of a time
When strifes shall be forgotten in a cycle m